1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention relate generally to graphics processing, and, more specifically, to a rasterization tile coalescer and reorder buffer.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a conventional graphics pipeline, graphics primitives are received by a raster unit in a specific order, known as “API order.” The raster unit rasterizes each graphics primitive into samples that reside within one or more specific screen regions, referred to as “screen tiles,” and then sends a “packet” of samples associated with each screen tile to downstream units for further processing. The downstream units may perform memory access operations for each received packet.
When rasterizing a given graphics primitive, the raster unit may generate packets associated with several different screen regions spanned by that graphics primitive. The downstream units that receive these packets may then need to perform memory access operations that target different memory regions, where each different memory region stores data corresponding to a different packet. Accordingly, processing packets of samples on a per-primitive basis may cause a sequence of non-local memory access operations. Non-local memory access operations are inefficient and may reduce the throughput of a graphics pipeline.
Accordingly, what is needed is a more efficient technique for sending packets of samples to downstream units in a graphics processing pipeline.